by Rick Boettger……. I really like Tony Yaniz. He was the lone Commissioner who fought to get two-way traffic back to North Roosevelt Boulevard, saving desperate local businesses. I know he is always on the job, and believe he always tries to do what is good for his district and the city. But on returning [more…]

“I’m very proud of that,” Monroe County Commissioner George Neugent said after looking through the climate assessment last week. “I’m very proud to be part of an initiation in a region that contains millions of people.” — Neugent commenting on praise for four-county compact that produced the Southeast Regional Action Plan Blue Paper We want [more…]

Dear Mayor Cates, Please accept my letter of resignation from the Key West Sustainability Advisory Board, effective immediately. I originally wrote this letter the night the commission voted to return us to twice-weekly trash pickup (2-1-1), but then decided to give myself a cooling-off period to see if it would change my mind. It has [more…]

Dear Editor, We were in attendance at the Key West City Commission meeting at Old City Hall on 5/20, for reasons unrelated to this letter. We listened as the Commission read a proclamation honoring and celebrating David Lybrand for his dedicatedvolunteer service on the City’s Sustainability Advisory Board. We all know why Mr. Lybrand resigned [more…]

When Key West city commissioners voted to override staff recommendations and choose a higher bid for trash pickup, people in the audience were stunned. But no one was more stunned than Jody Smith Williams. Smith Williams played a central role in getting the city to hire Kessler Consulting. Their job was to study how trash [more…]

David Lybrand, a founding member of the City of Key West’s five-year old Sustainability Advisory Board steps down in reaction to the City Commission’s controversial decision to disregard City staff’s and the advisory board’s recommendations when awarding a new solid waste contract. Below is his resignation letter tendered to Commissioner Teri Johnston and the City [more…]

Over my years of writing for various Key West newspapers, from time to time I have found that I could not restrain myself from responding to anonymous blabbermouths (like me, sometimes) who post their (usually anonymous) thoughts to local forums like the Voice, local Facebook pages, website comment sections, etc. Thoughts they express with such [more…]